


Stages of Grief

by Ducks



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-06-01
Updated: 2001-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:38:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ducks/pseuds/Ducks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally posted in 2001. When Buffy dies at the end of Season 5, following Angel and some friends through Kubler-Ross' Five Stages of Grief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stage I: Denial

"At first, survivors may deny the loss has taken place, and often experience a lingering numbness, shock, or lack of emotional sensation. We may withdraw from our usual social contacts, and refuse help or comfort. This stage may last a few moments or longer." - Arnot Ogden Medical Center's Guide to Dealing With Grief

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"There's no place like... Willow?"  
"What's..."  
Willow rose slowly to her feet, grief plain in her eyes... in the pale, drawn line of her features. In a split second, Angel knew.

"It's Buffy."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I remember the sensation of being sucked into Acathla's vortex with crystal clarity. It was like being vacuum sealed... all the air rushing away, the very cohesiveness of reality torn asunder, the solidity of my body broken, collapsing in on itself, shrinking into a pinpoint of pain... darkness... and finally, blinking into nothing. And when next I had form again, I found myself in Hell, where everything was agony. Each moment worse than the one before. An entire reality built of endless torment and torture, and my first coherent thought was the certainty that this was my eternity... and it was far less than I deserved.

This moment was worse.

I've experienced a lot of mood swings in my two and a half centuries, but never had I plummeted from pure, simple, buoyant joy to crushing despair as quickly and utterly as I did when my friends and I returned from Pylea to find Willow waiting.

No... that's not true. It happened once before, the night Buffy and I made love for the first time. When I fell asleep in her arms, cocooned by love... hope... dreams of the future... things I hadn't had since the cold, damp night of my mortal death... if I'd ever had them at all. When I woke to searing pain and stumbled blindly into the night... realized what was happening, and what would inevitably happen next... I felt it then. My first plunge into Hell.

In the matter of a heartbeat, looking into the big brown eyes of the dearest friend of my life's only love, I felt it. The moment that I said the words ((It's Buffy.)), I knew. My entire reality disintegrated and I was once again sucked into a vortex of disbelief... ultimate pain... and finally, nothingness. Hell again.

Buffy was dead. I could read it in Willow's eyes. The one thing in my entire existence that had truly been good was gone.

I froze there on the stairs, stunned. I couldn't move or speak, I forgot to breathe and just stood, gaping at her.

Cordelia broke the heavy silence first, taking a step forward as realization stole on her. "Oh... No. It can't be. Not Buffy," she moaned. I watched as she stumbled across the room in what seemed like slow motion, pulling Willow into a crushing embrace and bursting into very un-Cordelia-like tears.

Willow's eyes never left mine, even as her arms wrapped around Cordy. The Witch looked so haggard... so worn and old. And I remembered... she was little more than a child. A child who had seen far too much simply because she cared about one incredible woman. An unfair price to pay for such pure love...

"Dear God," Wesley mumbled, taking a step closer to me. I could feel his body heat pounding against my skin... scent his shock and sudden sadness, but he mercifully didn't try to touch me. "How? What happened?"

"Who's Buffy?" I heard Fred whisper.

And Gunn's soft reply. "It's uh... kinda a long story. Her and Angel used to... They were..." He left it at that, and Fred didn't push.

I don't remember walking to the couch or sitting down. Actually, there's not a lot that I remember about those first few moments, besides feeling... nothing. I wondered... shouldn't I be crying? Shouldn't I curse the Gods for taking her when she had already given so much? How could she just not... be, anymore?

Maybe I should have wept... but I didn't. I was calm... and colder than I ever remembered being. I sat beside Willow and listened to her spin the tale of that final battle... Buffy's nobility and bravery in the face of her death... how she sacrificed herself to save her sister, and ultimately, the world. She spared the more painful minutiae, of course, but it didn't matter. My imagination created a perfectly detailed picture of every one of Buffy's last moments. The agony on her sweet face... her body lying broken and bleeding on the ground, the beautiful light in her eyes snuffed out forever... her soft, golden skin gone grey with the dull pallor of death...

Death. Buffy was dead. I thought the words, but they had no meaning. No possible tie to my reality.

"I thought I should... I wanted to come and tell you in person," Willow concluded gently, and for the first time, I realized that she was holding my hands. I stared down at them... her small fingers fit around my larger ones much the way Buffy's had... the living heat of her skin was much the same, but somehow... not. She squeezed hard, almost desperately, and I realized that she wasn't just touching, she was holding. Holding on. Holding on to me.

I wanted to tell her not to, because I wasn't sure if I was solid enough to bear even her small weight anymore.

Cordelia sat nearby, crying in the safe circle of Gunn's arms. Wesley was on the phone talking... to Giles, maybe? Poor Fred just sat looking confused and lost.

Lost. Everything was lost. Everything I ever dreamed of and hoped for, crushed. My life's only light, gone.

Buffy. Dead. No warm, soft breath. No strong, soothing heartbeat. No more Buffy. It echoed on and on like a morbid mantra in my head.

I nodded absently. "Yes. Thank you. I appreciate that."

Willow's eyes flooded and she squeezed even harder. "I know how much you loved her. We all did. I'm so sorry, Angel. I'm sorry I couldn't... save her."

Buffy cold, her heroine's heart stilled forever, her strong, beautiful body buried under mounds of cold soil...all those inches of skin I'd kissed breaking down to their component parts... seeping away into the earth. Her smile would never again bring grace to my life. I would never feel her touch or hear her voice, and that particular way she said my name... with a sort of wonder... with a sweetness that, once upon a time, never failed to make my dead heart leap.

"She loved you too," my love's best friend went on, tears choking her voice, "She never stopped. She never said it... but we all knew."

Again, I felt my head bobbing in affirmation... I heard her words, and yet... I felt as though I was standing outside all of this, looking in. I got up. It was just a dream. A nightmare. It had to be, right? All I had to do was keep moving until the sunset woke me.

"Would anyone like some tea?"

Everyone stared at me as though I'd begun speaking a foreign language. What were they waiting for? For me to fall to my knees and keen like the mourning women of my mother country? To scream and cry and rage at the Powers for stealing the sunlight from me yet again? Why would I? None of this was real.

I didn't wait for an answer. My body moved of its own accord, down the hallway to the kitchen. The motions were automatic...open the cupboard... take down the kettle... turn the burner on... fill the pot with water... set it on the burner.

It was a new kettle... red, at Cordelia's insistence. To offset my perpetual black, she said. I tried to tell her... if she needed color, could she pick another than blood red? She said it wasn't blood red, it was crimson. The blue one that Buffy and I drank from on the Day That Wasn't was lost when my old apartment exploded.

I stared as the foreign kettle heated... then whistled with steam. I gave up my humanity so that she could live. I sacrificed both of our happiness... ripped both our hearts out... for what?

For her to do exactly this, I imagined. So she might fulfill her destiny... save the world, then die like every other Slayer had died.

I halted that line of thought very quickly, and stood staring at the bags of tea lined up like paper soldiers in the cupboard: morning blend; Earl Grey; Lemon Zinger; chamomile; peppermint. Buffy always liked peppermint. She used to say that tea was a horrible British disease she caught from Giles. She'd put two tablespoons of sugar in her cup before she poured, and I would tease her that she might save herself some trouble and just eat the sugar straight from the bowl. She would roll her eyes, wrinkle up her nose, and inform me that I should shut up, since I couldn't taste it, and therefore had no idea what I was talking about.

She was right, of course... but I could smell it on her, her usual sunshine and vanilla scent touched with the tang of the mint, and when we kissed, I could feel the sticky sugar on her tongue, and it made me remember what sweet tasted like. I could have tasted the world from her all night...

I picked up the bag of peppermint and stared at it, wondering if some cosmic answer might be found on the brightly colored label, and found suddenly that I didn't remember what I should be doing with it. I lost, in that moment, the simple ability to make tea.

Buffy. Was. Dead. Deceased. No longer among the living. Passed away. Kicked the bucket. Pushing up daisies. Gone to meet her Maker.

None of them sounded right.

A gentle hand lit on my shoulder. "Angel? Are you..." Wesley began, then reconsidered the question he was going to ask. Was I all right? Of course I was all right. Why wouldn't I be? Life would go on... I would go on... everything would remain exactly the way it had always been, and I wondered if Buffy would be upset that I had no milk in the fridge. You can't have tea without milk, she used to say... "Can I help?"

I forced myself to turn and face him... pity and sorrow wet in his kind blue eyes.

"I don't know if it would be right to make peppermint," I told him, and my voice sounded wrong... tinny and hollow, as if I was hearing myself from a great distance. I frowned. What was wrong with my voice?

His mouth drew into a sad, tight line. He nodded, and took the bag and kettle from my hands.

Did he know that Buffy liked peppermint? That the first time I suggested she could chew on the raw leaves to freshen her breath, she snorted that that was what Tic Tacs were for? Did he know that she curled her hair when the ends were still wet so she wouldn't get split ends, even though she knew she might get electrocuted? Or that she despised history class, but loved poetry, and that I used to read to her from books far older than would ever be, through long nights when we were desperate to be near one another, but were denied the simple comfort of touch? Did he know that her favorite color was blue -- not sky or navy, but Dusty Denim, a Dutch Boy paint that she saw in the hardware store when she was 9? Did he know that the last time I held her, I had no idea it would be the last time, and if I had, I never would have let her go?

"Perhaps chamomile is the best choice for this occasion," he replied calmly, "Why don't you join the others, and let the expert take care of the tea?"

I stared at him, wondering if I should remind him that I was two and a half centuries old... and Irish, thus plenty schooled in the fine art of tea-making, but chose to shrug and shuffle back to the lobby, instead. Everyone was exactly where I left them, only now Willow and Cordelia were crying together, and there was a big empty space at the end of the couch where they sat that just didn't seem like it belonged there...

Or maybe that was the hole inside of me. Was it possible for my heart to turn to dust, and still leave the rest of my walking corpse intact?

Willow's eyes met mine once more, and I could almost hear her thoughts, as clearly as if she'd spoken aloud.

'You're the only one who knows. Who understands how much I miss her. She was part of my heart, and now I feel like I'm dying too. Do you?'

I don't think I answered her. I should probably have been surprised at her new ability... maybe asked how the magick was developing, or how her new lover was, or how Dawn was handling this... or Giles... or even Xander. I should have been doing or saying *something* to help put the world back into its proper orbit and dispel the sensation in my stomach that if I walked back outside, I would find that the stars had all gone out, and the moon was weeping.

I walked over to them, meaning to say something... I don't know what. Or maybe to give them a hug. But there was nothing inside me. No pain, no tears, no comfort to share, so instead I simply looked at them for a moment... how lost they were in their grief, and wished that I could be there too.

"I, uh...I need... I'll be..." I stuttered, and went upstairs.

What difference would it make what I said or did? Buffy was dead, and I didn't know if I would feel anything ever again.

***

It was too dark in my room, so I turned on all the lights. The air was stale and hot, so I threw open the French doors to the summer night. The resulting breeze eased through the empty room, kicking up a thin cloud of dust over everything. How many days had I been gone?

Buffy had been dead for two.

So I dusted... the feathered brush swishing back in forth in a hypnotic rhythm over the dull, hollow surfaces of my life's trappings. The books and the tables, the chairs, the television. I swept away the cobweb that had sprung up in the corner near the balcony door, and I saw that the sheets were dirty. I pulled them off, along with the pillowcases and the bedspread, and threw them in a heap by the door. Pulled fresh ones out of the linen closet and remade the bed, executing four of the finest hospital corners I'd ever managed. I stood there and stared at the flawless angles and failed to understand why they used to matter so much. All those bits of order I forced on the unnatural chaos of my existence, suddenly meaningless.

There was so much to do, and I'd been gone for so long. The kitchenette floor needed mopping... maybe waxing, too. The fridge had developed a low rattle, and the blood inside was probably bad. So much to do... so much to do.

But I couldn't find the screwdriver, and the blood smelled okay, and my skin was too dry and tight to handle hot water or Pine Sol right now. I couldn't find the will to wonder why I even needed dishes at all, really, and the linoleum needed replacing, not waxing. Tiny cracks had popped up here and there in the cream tiles, exposing the old wood underneath. Maybe I would strip the floor and restore the room's original hardwood. The shine would be nice...

But it would make the space just that much darker.

I sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at nothing.

Buffy. My beautiful Buffy. My lover. My friend. My guiding light. My inspiration. Gone. Dead. Never coming back.

I could feel the pulling in my chest... the labor it took to simply draw a single, unneeded breath, and there was a pressure behind my eyes that said I should have been crying.

I loved her. No... *love* her. She was the reason I had come so far, and wasn't dust blowing in some cold Manhattan wind. I should have been mourning. I should have wept. After all, I'd bet that she cried for me when she was forced to send me to Hell. She would never talk about it, but I know her. I know she grieved for me.

So why couldn't I feel anything?

A soft knock fell on the door, and I laid back on the bed. I didn't want to answer. I couldn't look at any of them... at their pain or their concern... their confusion. I couldn't hear their condolences or reassurances that she didn't suffer... or that she was in a better place now. I didn't want to be held or consoled. I didn't want to *be*. I didn't want anything.

I just wanted her back. Failing that, the rest of the world could go to Hell. And stay there.

"Angel?"

I closed my eyes and pretended that I wasn't there. Closed off my senses to sight, scent and sound, and tried to remember what it felt like in my own casket, more than two hundred years ago. But the images were old and dull... faded to the point where I wasn't sure what I was really remembering, and what was just remnants of a thousand screaming nightmares.

Willow's weight depressed the mattress... but barely... as she sat down next to me. I laid there, and she sat there, and neither of us made a sound for... hours, maybe. I don't know. I kept my eyes closed, and neither of us asked for or offered comfort.

I always knew that Buffy would die. She was mortal... and the Slayer. My logical mind carried that knowledge somewhere deep within. But, like everyone else, I thought that "Someday" was a distant, abstract future, far away from Now. That she would fool them all... beat the odds. Die old and grey at the end of a long, happy life, full of love and sunshine, laughter and children... and the Watchers' Council would huff and puff and wonder how she managed it when all the others had failed.

I never thought it would be so soon. Never like this. Not without me having one last chance to tell her how much I loved her... how many precious gifts she gave me. How thankful I was, despite all the pain, that I had the honor of knowing her... of sharing some small part of her amazing life.

I never thought the day she died would be today... or yesterday... or a week ago. Always "Someday".

Willow took a long, hitching breath that finally broke into a sob, and my heart wrenched for her. I couldn't help the compulsion to sit up and reach out... take her warm, quivering form in my arms. I couldn't not help her in her hopelessness. That was my job. And she had once been my friend.

But who would help me? Who would tell me that this was real? That I hadn't somehow tumbled back into the pits of Hell?

"I loved her... so m-much, Angel! I wouldn't be who I am now if it wasn't for her. I don't know what to do! How am I supposed to live without her?" she cried, clutching me for dear life.

I closed my eyes again, and breathed in the shampoo-clean scent of her hair. Pulled her more tightly to me and desperately wished I could *feel*. Something. Anything.

Nothing came. So I just held her, because I didn't know how to answer her question. I didn't know if there was an answer.

I simply didn't know how to believe that there could be a world without Buffy Summers in it.


	2. Stage II: Anger

"The grieving person may then be furious: at the person who inflicted the hurt (even if she's dead), or at the world for letting it happen. He may be angry with himself for letting the event take place, even if, realistically, nothing could have stopped it." - Arnot Ogden Medical Center's Guide to Dealing With Grief

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took two weeks for me to even be able to consider going to Sunnydale. Two weeks of emptiness, running on automatic pilot. I didn't sleep... barely fed. Cordelia continued having visions, and my friends and I continued our work, as if the bottom hadn't fallen out of the universe. I chopped and sliced the demons, listened and spoke to those in need, and still... I sleepwalked through it all, unable to remember why I bothered. I was a husk of someone who once cared... the shell of an alleged champion. There was nothing all all left inside of me that could be called life.

Cordelia was the one who finally bullied me into going. She didn't even try for compassionate subtlety. She simply told me, point blank, that I *had* to.

"You have to say goodbye. You can't just walk around here pretending nothing's wrong. You have to *grieve*, Angel! You'll never be able to go on if you don't!"

"I'm *fine*, Cordelia!" I told her for the thousandth time, "I don't have to go to Sunnydale to grieve."

In fact, I'd become convinced that I didn't need to grieve at all. Hadn't I already mourned for Buffy the entire first year I spent here in LA? Didn't I cry myself to sleep every long, empty night for months over the loss of the only woman I'd ever loved? What need did I have to cry anymore? She was dead. Breaking down wouldn't bring her back. Nor would standing and staring at some rock with her name on it.

Cordelia looked me straight in the eye. "Maybe not. But *I* do. And I need you to come with me. Please."

She never liked Buffy very much... that was no secret. So her reaction over the past couple of weeks: sudden bouts of crying; her continual attempts to draw me into conversations where she would relive and remember our adventures on the Hellmouth... and now this? The meaning of it all eluded me.

"Why?" I wondered aloud, "Why should you care? You never showed anything but disdain for Buffy and the way I felt about her before. You never gave a single positive thought to her when she was alive, so why now?"

The anger suddenly beginning to well up in me was strange after all the nothingness. The sound of my voice slowly rising in volume and pitch was enough to make both Cordy and me jump.

But she stood fast. Instead of walking away or shouting back, she took my hands and looked deeply into my eyes.

"Maybe we were never really friends. But... whether I liked her or not, I respected her. I understood how important she was. And... she did save my life a bunch of times. You're right... I never told her any of that when she was alive. But... I need to show it now that she's..." Cordy shook her head as if to will the reality of it away. "I just need to. And I need to see the others. She was a *huge* part of our lives, Angel. We can't just pretend she never existed."

My fury grew, like burning lava in my gut. What did Cordelia know about loving Buffy? About having her be so much a part of her that the loss was like being ripped in two from the inside?

Roughly shaking off her hands, I barked, "I'm not going to Sunnydale, Cordelia, and that's final! Let it go, all right? If you need to be there, fine. Go. Take Wesley. Take Gunn. Take Fred, I don't care. But I'm not going!"

I turned my back and stomped away, slamming the office door behind me.

Only to have it crash open again a heartbeat later to admit a now enraged Cordy. She slammed her perfectly manicured hands down on the edge of my desk.

"Why are you being such a stubborn jerk? You *loved* her! You gave up your *humanity* for her! Are you going to try and convince me you don't *care* that she's *DEAD*?!"

I felt something snap inside of me... in my head, or maybe my soul, I'm not sure. But whatever it was broke, and the fury shot me from my chair.

"HOW DARE YOU?!" I raged, "Who the Hell do you think you are? Of *course* I care that she's dead! I feel like my heart's been ripped out of my chest! It's all I can do not to walk out into the sunrise every morning! How can you even *insinuate* that I don't *care*?!"

She blinked, the tears that had been welling in her eyes finally breaking free to trickle down her tanned cheeks. Her voice was soft and scared as she said,

"Because you haven't cried. Not even once. You haven't said her name out loud. You leave the room whenever we talk about her. You don't sleep. You don't eat. You haven't smiled once in two weeks. You shuffle around here like some creepy zombie hero robot with this blank look on your face. I know you hurt, Angel... I can *feel* it coming off you. And it scares me that you won't let yourself be sad that she's gone."

The anger left me in a rush as I listened to her speech, and I was left drained and vacant once more. Too weak to stand any longer, I slumped back into my chair and stared down at the blotter on my desk.

It still read "April 2001" -- I hadn't changed the calendar since I last went to Sunnydale. It was as though time had stopped when Buffy and I spent that night in the graveyard, talking. Like nothing had happened at all since that final kiss... that last goodbye that I failed to recognize. And in a flash, I remembered so many things I never got to tell her. Things I wanted so much to share, but held back because she needed to ease her burden... not take on mine.

And now she would never know all that I had learned because of her.

"I can't," I finally whispered, not raising my eyes from that date. "I don't have any tears left inside me for her. I can't go to Sunnydale. If I do... If I open myself to this..." I looked up slowly. "It might kill me."

She gave me a soft, reassuring smile. "You're already dead. But... if you want to go on living in your own special un-living sort of way, you have to go. You know you do."

I sighed and looked away again. "I'll think about it."

"Fine. But... think fast, okay? I'm leaving at sunset."

I looked up again once she'd left... left me alone with a single moment forever frozen in time, and a void where my dead heart should have been.

***

The grass in cemeteries is always an unnaturally flawless, deep emerald green, as if the combined life force of all the bodies buried its surface fed the soil. The blades were stiff and crisp, and crunched softly beneath my feet as I walked slowly through Sunny Rest. I wasn't in a hurry. After all, I had eternity to get to her... and she certainly wasn't going anywhere.

The irony of this particular pilgrimage didn't escape me. I remembered so clearly hours we spent here, "hunting"...kissing and holding hands... dreaming and talking against this tree or that mausoleum. So little had changed, and yet... everything was completely different. Inverted. All wrong. The memories crowded around me as I made my way, whispering like ghosts of times past... moments we spent together now as dead and lost as she.

It wasn't right. She should have been stalking the horrors that haunted this ground, not buried beneath it. She should have been able to smile and bury her nose in the dozens and dozens of white roses all around her. She shouldn't have been reduced to nothing but a slab of marble and a few sprouts of new grass.

And she certainly shouldn't have had an evil, soulless demon drunk and caterwauling wretchedly over her grave.

I was so shocked to see him there, for a long moment, I couldn't react at all beyond gaping. Spike sat, leaning hard against Buffy's gravestone, sobbing his way through some woeful mourning song, clutching a mostly empty bottle of scotch. Several others were scattered about... a couple of empties, and a few more full. Someone was obviously on a bender.

There was the anger again. How *dare* he profane her memory like this? Spit on her very *existance*, insult the dignity of her sacrifice? I felt myself shift into demon face and took the last few feet between us in a single stride, grabbing him and hauling him to his feet.

I can't remember what I said... I might have cursed him or threatened him... in Gaelic or Latin or Russian, I don't know. All I remember was blood red rage blinding my vision, the end result of which was my sending him flying a good twenty feet across the graveyard, where he finally crashed to earth...

And promptly curled up into a ball where he landed, sobbing even harder than before.

"STAY AWAY FROM HER!" I screamed, putting myself squarely between him and the grave.

"Sod off!" he choked, finally uncurling and struggling to his feet. He stumbled back toward where I stood, and gave me a weak shove. "You got no right. *I* was *here*! Where the fuck were *you*? Why wasn't it *you* puttin' your precious immortal superhero ass on the line for her?" He slurred, punctuating his speech by flinging the empty bottle across the ground, and it landed with a dull thud a few feet away. "If anybody's outta line bein' here, it's YOU!" He concluded, and plopped down on the ground beside me, claiming the next full bottle, cracking the seal, and sucking half of it down in a single swig.

"She fucking loved you, and you let her die," he added with a hiss. "So *you* fucking stay away from her."

I blinked at him, still trembling with fury and indignance, still full of a burning desire to dust him right then and there. But... I didn't want his filthy remains anywhere near her resting place.

Besides... he was right. My anger quickly turned inward. Why *hadn't* I been there? How did I dare to mourn her at all, when I might have been able to save her? I walked away. I was too weak to stay and try. The same weakness that had led to my mortal death drove me from her side, and she to her grave. I had never been able to say no. Never to her, even though I knew better. I couldn't fight my feelings... that pull like gravity that always brought me right back to her, when that was the last place I deserved to be. And my solution? Leave. Run away.

I should have stayed. I should have tried. I should never have kissed her that first time. It should have been me who was dead. It should have been my final end. Who was I to forbid Spike his grief when ultimately, it was I who had failed?

"I didn't even last 30 seconds," Spike moaned, "That bastard Doc tossed me off the tower like a bloody rag doll, and all I could do was fall." He looked up at me with an expression of agony like nothing I'd ever seen from him before. "I promised her I'd protect Dawn. I promised, and I failed. Now she's dead because of me."

My rage was swept away by the shock of his pain, and for the first time, I could scent his genuine sorrow. He was really grieving for her.

In the same moment, I grasped with a flash that this beast... this monster that I had tutored in torture and hatred and pain for a dozen years... loved her. Loved the Slayer. *MY* Slayer. And once I realized that, I could see it burning like an aura all around him.

Spike was in love with Buffy.

"You tried to kill her more times than I can *count*!" I spat, "I don't know what kind of twisted game you're playing, Spike, but... Go screw with someone else's loss! Your presence here is *disgusting*!"

He raised narrowed eyes to me. "Yeah? Well I don't give a flying FUCK what you think, how about that? I fucking *loved* her. I threw Dru over for her. I bloody well let that Glory bitch torture me half to death to protect her. I would have died in her place without a fucking *blink*!" With vampire speed, he was on his feet once more and shrieking in my face. His liquor and cigarette breath was like a cold, putrid wind against my skin, and I had to turn away. "YOU fucking broke her heart! YOU fucking killed her a good, long time ago, and it's only now that she finally realized she was dead! So you can take your soulful, holier than thou white knight bullshit and go FUCK YOURSELF WITH IT!"

He pushed me -- hard, this time -- and in my frozen shock, I stumbled a few steps back. Spike hovered over the grave, game face apparent, and began screaming at the memorial. "WHY!? Why did you fucking do it? You weren't supposed to DIE! You were supposed to fucking WIN! You were supposed to be a nasty, snotty, ass-kicking wench FOREVER! I FUCKING HATE YOU!" He hurled the scotch at the gravemarker, where it shattered, spilling golden liquid down its polished face. "STUPID MARTYR BITCH!"

I didn't even think to move, but a moment later I found myself standing over Spike, my knuckles bloody from hard contact with his fangs.

"DON'T YOU EVER DISRESPECT HER LIKE THAT, BOY! You're not fit to even share SPACE with her grave!"

He laughed drunkenly... bitterly, and sat up, wiping the blood from his chin and licking it off before laying a sneer on me.

"Yeah, that's right, Angelus. Take your guilt out on me. Don't worry, you can't say anything to me I haven't said to myself a million goddamn times already." Spike turned his gaze back to the stone and rose to his knees, tracing the letters of her name with trembling fingers. "I knew she'd never love me, but... She made me want to *be* something. She made me want to change. I haven't changed in a hundred bloody years, but she..." He shook his head as his tears returned. "It's not right that she's dead, and the world just keeps on going like she never existed at all."

I couldn't comprehend any of this. I'd known that Spike was capable of love... of tenderness. He'd demonstrated that very fact countless times with Drusilla. But I also knew the basic essence of him was violent... bloodthirsty... in love with nothing more than the hunt and the kill. I remembered all too clearly the particular savagery of his Slayer obsession.

How could it have transformed into this?

"Half the time, I just wanna... kill. Everyone. Everything," he babbled on, "Shred the whole bloody human race, chip be damned. I almost wish I could get hold of Acathla again and suck this miserable slimehole of a world right into Hell myself. All these worthless fucking bloodbags just keep traipsing around like everything's honky dory. I hate them. I have every single soddin' one of them. They never appreciated her. They never gave half a toss what she gave up so they could go on living their puny, pathetic little lives."

He leaned forward, pressing his face into the stone for a moment, his eyes closed, and his face a twisted mask of rage and pain.

"I miss you, Slayer," he cried, "I miss you so bloody much."

Shame washed through me once more. This villain had been here... he'd been by her side in her final days. He'd tried to help in spite of the dissonance with his nature. And where was I? Off playing hero in another world, bathing in sunlight and staring at my reflection, worrying about my hair.

Spike finally dragged himself to his feet. He seemed to have forgotten I was there at all.

"I'll never forget you, Summers. And I swear, I'll watch after Niblet till she takes her last breath. Which'll be a long bloody time from now, if I have anything to say about it." He pressed his fingers to his mouth, kissed them, and finally laid them over her name. "Rest well, luv. I'll see you again soon."

Then, he claimed the last bottle of scotch from the grass, and left without another word or glance back at me.

I couldn't bring myself to look at Buffy's gravestone. She wasn't there... what was the point? There was no part of the woman that I loved buried under that cold, hard ground.

I looked up at the stars... I had forgotten they were so bright there. In LA, I could never see them at all. It was still early... barely eight o'clock, and yet I felt as though I'd been standing there for an eternity. The nights all seemed so long now.

Everything that remained of Buffy was probably curled up on the couch, watching TV a few blocks away. The last remnants of my beloved's flesh and blood. What was I doing here, when Dawn...

I turned and walked toward Revello Drive. If there was grieving to be done, I would do it there.


	3. Stage III: Bargaining

"At this stage, the grieving person may make bargains with God: 'If I do this, will you take away the loss?" - Arnot Ogden Medical Center's Guide to Dealing With Grief

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Buffy's house first came into view, I came close to turning the car around and going back home. What did I think I was going to accomplish by coming here? Dawn had all of Buffy's friends around her. She certainly didn't need me, the vampire who made her sister's life various kinds of living torture over the years.

I hadn't seen her at all since I left Sunnydale. She'd be 14, now -- a young woman -- no longer the sweet little girl that used to make me stand in front of mirrors all the time because she was fascinated by my lack of reflection.

When push came to shove, Dawn was really the only one who never looked at me with fear, even after I tried to eat her on Valentine's Day three years ago. When I came back from Hell, she was the only one who welcomed me unequivocally... the only one who really accepted that I wasn't Angelus. In her simple, child's view of reality, the demon was the demon, and I was something else.

So I think I broke her heart nearly as much as anyone's when I left. I remembered her coming to the mansion a few nights after I broke up with Buffy. How she had screamed and raged at my selfishness; for being such a "wussy"; for giving up so easily on her sister. She ripped my heart into even tinier pieces that night, ultimately planting the seeds for my final decision to go to the prom.

Dawn was more than just my lover's sister... there were many times when I felt as though she were my own. A living second chance to be the presence in a young life that I should have been with Katherine.

But I killed Kathy, didn't I? And I almost killed Dawn... along with everyone else she loved. I broke her sister's heart time and time again. What right did I have to try and offer condolences now?

Was that even why I came? Or was I here to get comfort for myself from the only living remainder of all that Buffy was? Did I need a reminder of just what she died for?

I didn't know. And when I pulled up in front of 1630, I found Dawn sitting on the front steps, and it was too late to change my mind either way.

She watched me coming up the walk with those big, blue eyes, and I could see anguish written so clearly there... But they were dry, and she almost managed a smile at my approach.

"Took you long enough," she complained lightly.

It was meant as a joke, I'm sure, but the blunt truth of it sliced right through me. It had taken far too long for me to come home. And now that I had... home wasn't even there anymore.

"Sorry," I mumbled, and tried to return her smile.

Dawn moved over, making a space for me beside her on the step.

It was painful to look at her... this brave girl, left alone to bear the burden of a family destroyed, and the knowledge that it was at least partly because of her. That Buffy's death was her fault.

I thought that, and was immediately horrified that I had. It wasn't her *fault*. She never asked for any of this. It was no one's fault -- it was just the way things went when we were all at the mercy of the cruel hands of fate. Buffy might have been the greatest Slayer in history, but she was still only human... and the simple fact remained -- humans die. At least Buffy's end had some meaning. And I gazed long and hard at that meaning sitting beside me.

"How are you?" I asked. People always say foolish things in moments like that... when you know, deep down, that there really isn't anything you *can* say, and yet... the social instinct of humanity compels you to reach out anyway. I might be something other than human, but my soul was still bound by that simple rule.

She shrugged, her gaze cast to the ground. "I'm not dead."

Those three words conveyed so much... sorrow and loss, guilt and gratitude all at once.

I knew intimately how she felt.

"No, you're not," I agreed.

Dawn forced her eyes upward and looked at me quietly for a long time. I felt pressed under her scrutiny, as though she was trying to look into my mind... my heart and soul, to see what I was feeling. So much like her sister had years ago, when she was briefly telepathic, and she attempted to read my thoughts.

It hurt now to remember... all Buffy ever had to do was ask. She never had to trick me into talking to her...

"You didn't come to the funeral," she observed. "I kind of thought you would."

This time, it was me who shrugged. "I didn't know it happened until... after."

She nodded, and we fell into a silence both companionable and awkward at once. We looked out together at the stars, lost in our thoughts, until she spoke once more.

"I know how to bring her back," she informed me softly.

I turned to stare at her, uncertain if I heard correctly. "What?"

Our gazes met, and I found a bold determination burning behind her eyes. A knowledge and wisdom that no child her age should possess -- should have to possess -- and it chilled me to the bone. Was she saying...

"I know how to bring Buffy back to life. I could do it. It's easy. I did it with my mom, and I think it would have worked, but... I changed my mind and broke the spell at the last minute."

"Dawn..." I began to object.

"No, I know. It wouldn't be right. I mean... it wouldn't really be... her," she admitted sadly, "But it's so hard not to, Angel. I miss her so much, and... she shouldn't be dead. It's not fair."

Her voice broke at the end, and I was once again overwhelmed with emotion in the face of another's grief. I so envied her that outpouring. I reached out to put my arm around her, and she leaned heavily against my shoulder.

"No, she shouldn't be," I concurred, "But she is. You have to let her go."

"I know," she whimpered, then suddenly yanked away. "No, you know what? I DON'T know! She died for ME! WHY? I'm not even REAL! She should have just LET ME DIE!"

It had been so hard for me to fathom what Buffy told me that night at her mother's grave... that Dawn wasn't Dawn at all... or at least, she hadn't been until a few months before. I had so many memories of time we spent together. It was beyond my understanding that they weren't genuine, when I could feel every moment of it in my heart.

I grabbed her gently and turned her to look at me once more. The agony in her eyes ripped me apart.

"Dawn, you *are* real. Real enough for Buffy to be willing to die for. Don't diminish that by trying to raise a zombie with her face. You have to go on. She would want you to."

Her bottom lip trembled, tears splashing in a torrent down her flushed cheeks, and for a moment, she was the little girl that I once knew... small and innocent, crushed under the unbearable force of a world that seemed to have nothing to offer her but pain.

Or maybe, I was simply seeing Buffy reflected in her.

"How... how am I supposed to..." she sobbed, "The last thing she said to me was that... she wanted me to live. For her. How can I, Angel? She was strong, and beautiful, and funny, and everybody loved her. I'll... I'll never be her! I'll never be able to pay her back!"

She collapsed in my arms and I held her, listening to her beg God to bring Buffy back, and take her instead.

"Please! I'll do anything!" she wailed, "Anything!"

I closed my eyes, rocking her gently, and struggled to fathom what felt to me to be the ultimate injustice. How could the Powers think that this was fair? To heap sorrow after sorrow on this child and all the people around her -- good people, who laid everything on the line... sacrificed everything they held dear, for what they thought was right? Whose darkest sin had been loving the Chosen One?

And Buffy... Sweet Buffy, who had wanted so little for her life... who asked for nothing more than the normalcy every other human being took for granted. She'd had such simple dreams. All she wanted was to live... to love... so little to ask, when she had given so much.

Anger welled up in me once more. Why? Why her? She had never been anything but brave and strong in the face of a world that refused to stay solid under her feet. Why should she and all of her dreams be dead when I, a monster who had perpetuated the darkest evils imaginable, was allowed to remain?

It wasn't right. And as I held Dawn, listening to her keening echo in the fading night, I vowed to myself that I would do something about it. They called me a champion. A warrior for right. Helper of the hopeless.

Perhaps this was my chance to finally earn those accolades.

***

Lorne didn't look the least bit surprised when I arrived at Caritas just before dawn. He simply leaned the broom he had been holding against the bar, and stepped forward to take me in a comforting embrace.

"I'm so sorry, Angel," he said softly as he pulled away, "I know how much she meant to you. I wish there was something I could do."

I pulled away and held his gaze. "There is. I want an audience with the Powers."

He blinked very slowly, and wiggled a finger in his ear as if to clear it. "That's better. Now... could you repeat that, because I could have sworn you just said..."

"You heard me. I want to talk to the Powers That Be. Now."

"Oh. Oh, honey," he chuckled sadly, backing away. "I know you're hurtin' and all, and really, I'm sorrier than you can imagine, but..."

I followed him. "No. No but. I know it can be done. And either you know how, or you know someone who does."

His expression changed quickly from shock to a mixture of pity and incredulity as he sank onto a barstool.

"Sweetie, there's no way. I know you mean well, but..."

I took the last space between us, and leaned down so that our faces were inches apart.

"I'm supposed to be Their Chosen, aren't I? I have a *right*!"

The Host sighed, his gaze dropping to the half-empty drink on the bar. "No one has that right, Angel. You can't just go running to the Powers every time something happens that you don't like. It's just not done."

"NOT DONE?" I heard myself shouting, "LOOK AT ME AND TELL ME HOW MUCH YOU THINK I GIVE A *DAMN* WHAT'S NOT *DONE*! Do you know how to contact them or NOT?"

Some part of me felt badly for taking this out on my friend. But I had to do this. I had to make myself heard this final time, do whatever I could to remedy this injustice, or I might never be able to fight under Their banner again. The Oracles were dead... the swimming pool where I had undertaken the Trials for Darla was repaired and filled. All my other options were lost, leaving only him.

He frowned, and for the first time since I'd known him, I saw some measure of anger on his placid features. Still, though, his voice remained calm and even. "Angel. Honey. Stop. Think about this. I know that you're angry. You feel cheated. You gave up everything so your lady love could live a long, happy life." Lorne rose from the stool and gently pushed me backward, out of his personal space. "You think you got ripped off by the Powers. You feel guilty that you weren't there... that it wasn't you who died... *and* you can't stop thinking that you could have spent those last few months together, if you knew your sacrifice would go to waste. That's all perfectly *normal*. But raging at the Powers won't change what has to be! You of all people know that you can't thwart Destiny. Remember a little evening of fun called The Trials?"

I shoved him away. "I didn't come here for *therapy*, Lorne!" I hissed, "And this is completely different from what happened with Darla. Buffy was *good*! *Always*! She had *nothing* on her soul to be punished for! She deserved to LIVE!"

He stood up straight, shrugging out the shoulders of his jacket with a sigh. "Sure she did. But it doesn't matter, puddin'. What you're asking can't be done. Come on... let me make you a nice O-Pos Mary, and we'll sit down and..."

"NO!" I screamed, wrenching the barstool closest to me from its moorings, and hurled it across the bar, smashing what little of the mirrors and bottles of liquor remained from the car plowing through it on our return from Pylea.

I can't tell you what came over me... where my last shreds of sense and sanity went. I can't even tell you much about what happened next but that I unleashed my fury at the gods themselves on Caritas.

Mercy. What a joke. There was no mercy to be found under the heavens. No justice at all if a pure, honorable soul could be ripped away... and for what? Some endless war that never had a victor, that kept swallowing generation after generation of beings whose only crime was the having the bad luck to be born with goodness in their hearts?

The Host didn't try to stop me as I destroyed his home and livelihood, cursing the name of every deity and saint that popped into my head. He stood quietly nearby, his face marked with his trademark empathy, calmly waiting for the madness to pass.

He had, after all, said he wanted to remodel the bar.

But it didn't pass... or even fade. It seemed to go on forever. Even in my soulless days, I'd never been so driven with unadulterated rage... with such a pure hunger to annihilate. I shudder to imagine, thinking back on it now, that if I had gone on Lorne himself might have fallen in that maelstrom of grief.

Then a pain struck me... hot and sharp like a bolt of lightning, and the world was wiped out in a rush of storm wind that sucked all of the superfluous oxygen out of my dead lungs.

I remember thinking in that moment, as the familiar decor of Caritas vanished and I saw and felt and heard nothing, that God had finally struck me down. If I'd have had any form at all, I probably would have laughed at the irony. Of all the countless sins I had committed, it was that one, born of ultimate pain and sorrow, that finally pissed Him off enough to take me out, once and for all.

But it was only a moment, and then with another rush of wind, I... *was*, again, for lack of a better term. I looked down and could see my body, dressed in the same clothes I had been wearing since yesterday, fresh blood on my hands from crushing glass, wood and Formica to fine powder.

I had form... but wherever I had arrived did not. All I saw was a murky grey in every direction. I stood in a void... no ground, no walls, and no sky. Just emptiness.

The same color, I imagined, as my shattered heart.

A voice boomed from nowhere and everywhere at once. I call it a voice, but... that's not what it was. I don't think it was really even a sound at all. More... a sensation inside of me. And when the sensation spoke... or... moved... it wasn't a voice, but The Voice. Indeed, all The Voices. I stood frozen in awe and confusion.

Creation was speaking to me.

"You question."

I didn't understand. Was it asking me, or telling me?

"Yes," I finally replied.

"It is what it is."

Great. What or whoever spoke was far more cryptic than Lorne had ever dreamed of being. Well... I did ask for an audience. Maybe this was the reason why they never gave one.

I swallowed stiffly. So... I was here... whatever here was. What now?

"We had a bargain," I reminded Them.

"You cannot barter with the Cycle. There is only movement. Oneness."

There was no way for me to piece together this puzzle. All of the abstract philosophy I had read over the centuries in no way prepared me to deal with this.

So I simply spoke from my heart... from the dark pit of rage and pain that froze the edges of my soul.

"I want her back. You can't take her!" I shouted into the nothing. "You expect me to represent your Justice? Your Law? How can I when you can't keep a simple deal with ME?"

The void blinked... white, then black, and finally back to that empty grey once more, as if it was thinking. Then there was a POP! like the cork being pulled from a bottle of champagne, and I found myself looking into eyes of crystal clear blue that I never thought to see again.

At least... not in this world.

"Ach. So much for eternal rest, eh?" the apparition complained.

I blinked at it. Closed my eyes. Shook my head to clear my vision. But when I looked again, it was still there -- a grief long scarred over, suddenly returned to life.

He gave me a crooked grin, and threw open his arms. "Ya just gonna stand there, or are ya gonna say hello to your long lost pal?"

"Doyle?" I gasped, but didn't move toward him.

He looked the same. Exactly the same as the night he died. The same cocky smirk, the same slovenly outfit, the same barely-combed hair, and even the faded scent of whiskey wafting from his skin.

He nodded. "Yep. Guess I don' need to ask how you are," he said softly, giving me a once over. For the first time, I realized what I must look like in my rumpled, blood-stained clothes. When his eyes met mine once more, I found the same thing in them that I'd been witnessing from all my friends in the past few weeks. Pity. Compassion. Sorrow. Even ghosts felt sorry for me.

I had to turn away. It was too much, to look on yet another being that I had loved so dearly, and who had sacrificed himself to save others. Was I the only one, then? The only one unwilling... or maybe unable... to die for what I believed in?

"Aw, Angel, come on. You know that ain't true. You sacrifice every day. You walked away from Buffy in the first place so that she could have a better life. You were willing to die for Darla. Hell..." he glanced around at the nothing that surrounded us. "You pretty much put your eternal ass on the block just to come here. They don't take too kindly to their soldiers cursing 'em in public, you know?"

I forced my gaze up at him again. "Why are you here?"

Doyle shrugged. "They can't communicate with you. They can't give you any answers because they don't understand your questions. So they sent me to help out." He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, "And to be honest, the timing was damn good. Me old da was handing me my ass at poker. Again."

I stared at him in wonder and remembered... I had been able to grieve for Doyle. I had been able to cry, to fall apart, and finally to accept his passing as the way things had to be. I had vowed to carry on in his name, the memory of his bravery always at the forefront of my heart, part of the crest I would bear on my shield until the last battle was won.

Why couldn't I do the same for the very woman who had inspired me to take up that shield in the first place?

Doyle's smile turned sad, and he stepped toward me, laying a gentle hand on my arm.

"Because ya don't really believe she's dead, that's why."

I frowned at him. "Don't be ridiculous. Of course I believe she's dead."

He shook his head. "No. You won't let yourself believe it, because you don't think it 's right. Not that I blame ya. I mean, let's face it, ya loved the girl, didn't ya? She was the center of your whole universe for a long, long time. The reason for every damn thing that you ever did. It's hard to let go of something that important."

"Tell them to take me," I suddenly found myself begging him, grabbing his shoulders and giving them a shake. "Take me instead of her. She didn't deserve to die."

"Doesn't work that way, my friend. What the Big Guys were trying to tell you before was just that... Death is part of the Plan, you know? Everybody's got an expiration date. You know it, and your Buffy knew it. I knew when I'd reached mine, too. Nobody wants to stop living, Angel. But... sometimes we have to. Sometimes that's just the way it is, and without that part of the circle, the rest of it's just... meaningless. What good is everything After if you don't go through everything Before?"

I could hear his words... I knew what he was telling me, but I couldn't see how this Zen fortune cookie garbage was any more helpful than the nonsense The Voice had been spewing on my arrival. I didn't want to have koans preached to me. I didn't want abstract logical puzzles to sort through. I wanted answers. I thought They had sent Doyle to clarify our communication...

"Well... yeah and no," he explained, reading my thoughts once more, "You came to beg a case. To plead for them to give her back to you. But They can't do that, pal. You know they can't. Done is done... one door closes and another opens and all that, remember?"

"They why are you here?" I shouted at him, "Why did They bother sending you if they weren't even going to hear my argument?"

"Hey, brother, listen to yourself! 'Argument?' You got an argument against Death that They haven't heard a million times already? You can't tell Them anything about young Buffy They didn't already know, can ya?"

Of course I couldn't... They had, after all, made her what she was. And They had to know by now what she meant to me... and to everyone else who knew her.

"Doyle... They can't do this," I whispered, the effort of speaking finally too much, "It's not right."

"That's just it. It *is* right. And that's why They sent me. To give you what you need, instead of what you think you want."

*Think* I want? Did the Powers somehow imagine that my deepest desire wasn't to see Buffy one more time? That I didn't want, more than anything I had ever wanted before, for her to *live*?

I'd given up everything for exactly that.

Doyle's posture drooped a little when he responded, as though he was sorry for what he had to say. "They never promised you that she'd live forever, Angel. In fact, they never promised anything at all but that you could have That Day back."

Anger flashed briefly inside me, but vanished almost instantly. Some part of me knew that I couldn't be upset at the Powers, because Doyle was right. The Oracles had done only exactly what they promised.

"If it makes you feel any better," he went on, "She would have died a lot sooner -- and stupidly -- if you had stayed human."

I wanted it to make me feel better, I really did. But I was unsurprised when it only made me angrier.

"Fine," I snapped, "So what do the All Wise think I *need*, then?"

"You need to see something," he informed me, giving me a smack on the shoulder.

For an instant, I was awash in a memory... another tacky half-demon, but this one on a cold Manhattan street. "I've got something I want you to see. Then you tell me what you want to do."

But Doyle's hand against the leather of my coat made a booming sound, like thunder, and another explosion of white light shattered my vision.

When it cleared again, we were somewhere that seemed to be a construction site -- there was clutter and scaffolding everywhere, lumber and power tools littering the ground. Time crawled by, while Doyle and I moved normally through the rubble. Fire rained down from the Heavens... the air was split with shouting, and the shriek of monsters materializing everywhere. I looked up, and saw the universe crack wide open... an ocean of electricity tearing at the sky above.

The apocalypse. Was this happening now? Tomorrow? Next week? Sometime in the past?

My answer came in the form of familiar faces that began to appear here and there... caught in the heat of battle. Giles fired a crossbow into a crowd of unfamiliar demons... Willow and her blonde friend chanted frantically, casting spells almost randomly into the fray. I found myself stepping over the prone form of Spike, who bled profusely from wounds in his head that looked serious... like his skull was crushed from a fall.

A fall... I suddenly remembered Willow's story... Buffy had jumped... leapt to certain death from a tower built to be the centerpoint of the convergence that would tear a hole in the fabric dividing the dimensions. The only way to stop the ritual was to stop Dawn's blood from flowing... Summers blood... Buffy's blood.

We were at the scene of Buffy's death.

For a moment, I froze, unable to fathom why the Powers would think I needed to come *here*... to see *this*. I found my gaze pulled upward once more, a whole new horror rushing through me. They believed I needed to see this... Buffy falling toward me, her body already limp and still except for the motion of the fall, dead limbs flailing as if to take flight. All painfully slow, as if someone had turned down the speed of the world, so I wouldn't miss a single moment... an excruciating detail.

I barely heard myself screaming her name above the gale... it took forever for her to finally crash to earth in the middle of a pile of rubble a few feet away.

"NOOOOOO!" I bellowed, diving into the debris where her beautiful body lay, now broken and lifeless.

I scooped her limp form into my arms. She was already growing cold, her skin paling to the dull grey pallor of death, despite the expression of peace and acceptance etched on her beautiful face... That face that so haunted my dreams...

Everyone and everything vanished but she and I as I held her... crushed the shell that had once housed the most precious soul in all creation to my chest, and wept senselessly. For the first time since I found Willow in the lobby of the Hyperion, I *felt* it.. The reality, the finality of it all... her final decision, and the peace that came with the knowledge that she was about to die for the world -- for her sister. Her love for all of those she was leaving behind... including myself. I finally felt her go the way I always knew that I would, as if part of me had taken her hand and gone right along with her.

At last the dam broke inside me... the wall I hadn't wanted to admit I had built around my heart crumbled, and an anguish like nothing I'd experienced since I regained my soul ripped through the center of my being.

For the first time, I not only knew... I *believed*. My beloved was dead.

"Oh God, Buffy!" I sobbed, collapsing around her... wailing until I thought the universe might be washed away in the tempest. I touched her beautiful face... ran my fingers through the silken cascade of her hair, and kissed her cold, blue lips.

Doyle was right... despite all my protests to the contrary, I hadn't really believed that she could be dead. The truth of it didn't register inside of me until those endless hours as I knelt there, weeping over her body. I finally knew...

This was real. This was her corpse. Buffy was really gone, and all the begging and anger and wishes in the cosmos would never bring her back. It was her shell buried under those mounds of roses in Sunny Rest. That stone with her name on it really was the final memorial that marked her passing.

I bawled like a wounded child until I was bone dry, and finally could do nothing more than shake, sick to death with this truth. All this time that she and I had been separated, some small part of me had clung to a sliver of hope that someday... somehow, Buffy and I would be reunited. When the wars were over and we were released from our Duty... When I again had a heartbeat and true breath with which to speak her name, I honestly believed that we would grow old and die together.

Now, that would never happen. We would have no happily ever after.

The scene vanished, her body gone from my desperate embrace, and I found myself back on the floor of the bar, held tight in Lorne's arms.

"It's okay, Angel. It's gonna be okay," he lied, and gently helped me to my feet.

As he led me out the door and we got in a cab, I felt Doyle's voice, one last time, in my heart.

"You will be together again, my friend. Someday... "


	4. Stage IV: Depression

"The person feels numb, although anger and sadness may remain underneath." - Arnot Ogden Medical Center's Guide to Dealing With Grief

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Has he eaten anything?" Cordy whispered, as though I didn't have preternatural hearing, and every word she said wasn't as clear as if she were standing right next to me, and not out in the hall.

"I'm afraid not. The mug's exactly where I left it this afternoon," Wesley whispered in response.

They were performing their daily ritual of "Check on the Broken Vampire". It was always the same. One would come in just before sunset and make sure I hadn't walked out to meet that morning's dawn, then gently call my name, and sigh when I didn't bother to respond, before they finally gave up and left. They took turns bringing me blood that I never drank, leaving me the paper that I never read, and then went out to carry on a mission that I just didn't see any point to anymore.

What did any of it matter? My only reason for being was gone, and it was nothing more than weakness that kept me from doing exactly what my friends feared. Eventually, I imagined, I would reach starvation state and turn into a rabid animal, then they would be forced to stake me, and I could finally go to my rest... finally be with Buffy.

That was assuming that my soul went to Heaven...

"It's been over a week. He can't go on like this!" Cordy complained.

"I don't think he wants to go on at all," Wesley informed her adroitly.

"We can't just let him kill himself! We have to *do* something!"

"Like what, Cordelia?" Gunn piped in, "Tie him down and force him to eat? What exactly do you think we can do that we haven't tried already?"

"I don't know. Maybe... Dawn can talk to him again..."

Dawn had come on the third day I spent in bed and sat beside me, spending a few hours remembering aloud many good times that she, Buffy and I had spent together.

I only burrowed deeper into the pillows and tuned her out. Eventually, she too gave up and left.

"I don't believe there's anything else we can do," Wesley went on, "He needs to grieve in his own way... in his own time. Ten days seems a long while to us, but... to an immortal, it's merely a moment. He'll come 'round."

"If he doesn't *starve* to death, first!" Cordy sniped.

I knew I was being selfish... childish... weak... immature, and I just didn't care. The vision of Buffy's death... the final, awful reality of it, sat on my chest like a ten-ton stone, crushing me under its unbearable weight. The feeling was so much worse, even, than that night I spent with Darla. Even in that moment of what I thought was utter hopelessness, when I plunged into the familiar cold of my Sire's dead flesh, some minute part of me still hoped. Hoped, at least, for an end to the pain.

Now there was no hope at all. The only thing that remained was agony. Anguish that, once upon a time in a long ago dream, a beautiful girl with eyes of summer moss and hair of spun gold had chased away with a single touch of her small, warm hand.

I had believed that there were no tears left inside of me. I thought, as I had mourned over the phantom of her corpse, that I had gone dry, and all that remained of my heart was dust. But as a week stretched into two, and I hid in the shadows of my lonely room waiting to die, still I wept. I would look up and see a shadow, and think it might be her. I would hear a ghostly whisper, and be certain for a moment that she had returned. I kept waiting for her to appear in the doorway and say, "Oh, this is really attractive, Angel. Come on, did you really think I would leave you? Don't be such an ass." And then the world would be right again.

She never did. She never would. And so, still I lamented for the loss of her, like some mourner in a tragic fairy tale, my endless life's only meaning.

***

Of all the people who tried to reach me during those weeks, it was the newest of my friends who finally succeeded.

Fred came in early one evening, armed with a book, a cup of coffee, and a freshly baked cake... that smelled distinctly like a bizarre mixture of chocolate and blood.

The odd combination caught my attention, even through the haze in which I had been existing. I listened to her move about the room... set the cake down on the table near the windows, and opened the French doors, flooding the stuffy space with fresh, warm air. Then she plopped down on the couch, set her coffee on the end table, turned on the light, curled her legs up beneath her, and began to read.

I laid there for a while, waiting for her to say something. To ask how I was, or insist that I eat, as the others had done. But she didn't. This was a new approach, and I found myself curious about what she was doing. That curiosity forced me out of bed, into my long forgotten sweats, and dragged my sorry carcass toward the sitting room, where I finally leaned heavily in the doorway.

After a few moments, Fred finally noticed my presence, and looked up to give me a sweet smile.

"Oh, hi! You're up! I didn't mean to wake you. I just really didn't feel like being alone, and I thought you were asleep, so you wouldn't mind if I came in here to read. You don't, do you? Mind, I mean? 'Cause... if you do, I can go back to my room. I don't want to put you out, you know... in your condition. Cordy says I should probably be careful, because you're not eating, and any minute you're bound to eat me, but..." She shrugged. "I'm not really afraid of you. But I thought you might be hungry, so I made you something. I don't know if it'll be any good, but... it can't be worse than tree bark enchiladas, right? Ha ha."

I blinked at her, stunned by her babbling. Fred was so new to my reality that I had pretty much forgotten her, and it seemed strange to see her sitting on my couch. There was something enthralling about her chirpy ramblings, though, that drew my murky consciousness slowly upward.

"What's that?" I asked, nodding toward the cake.

Her smile widened as she set her book down and stood next to the table, gesturing over it like a proud saleswoman at a bake sale.

"It's cake!" she declared. "As it turns out, blood works almost as good as pudding in the mix. Of course, it took a while to get it right. I had to experiment a little. Like, sheep's blood is better than pig, because it's thicker, and I had to double the egg whites, because the first two didn't rise. And I haven't actually tasted it, so it might be really gross, but Cordy said you liked chocolate, so I thought what the heck? The least I could do was give it a try, right? You don't feel like eating, so it's like that spoonful of sugar thing, you know? And I used to really love to cook -- cookies, pies, cakes -- and I want to relearn all that stuff I used to do, so... two birds with one stone and all that!"

I continued to stare at her as she chattered, then finally glanced down at her offering once more. "You baked... a chocolate blood cake," I recapped incredulously.

Fred nodded. She looked so earnest and pleased with herself, I felt bad that I couldn't be more enthusiastic.

"Okay," I shrugged, "I'll try it."

"Yay!" She chirped, and with an excited little hop, disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a plate, fork, and knife.

We sat down at the table, and she cut me a slice of the unusual cake. I ate it more out of curiosity and respect for her gesture than any genuine desire to assuage my hunger...

But much to my surprise, it was actually good.

"I put in extra cocoa, too. Wesley says vampire taste buds can't really pick up non-blood stuff very well, and... well, what's the point of eating chocolate cake if you can't taste the chocolate?"

I *could* taste the chocolate. And the extra cocoa overwhelmed the blood, so at the same time some of my energy returned from the badly needed nourishment, my spirits were lifted, however infinitesimally, by the simple sensation of eating chocolate cake.

I ate that piece and devoured three more as we sat there in companionable silence. When I finished, I felt more wide-awake and aware than I had in weeks.

"Thank you," I told her. And I meant it to cover far more than just the cake.

"You're welcome. I'm glad you liked it," she replied with another one of her charming smiles. "So, are you... feeling better? Everybody's been really worried about you. Do you feel like talking? Or... maybe we can play chess. Or watch TV or something."

I looked down at the sticky crumbs on my plate as her words reminded me of why I was in this emotional state to begin with. My mind was immediately flooded with thoughts of Buffy... how we'd eaten chocolate and peanut butter in bed That Day, laughing and reveling in one another's presence. She had listed a hundred chocolate things she planned to feed me -- including cake. I laughed and told her if she wasn't careful, I'd weigh 600 pounds in no time. I remembered her leaning toward me with a soft, adoring smile as she said, "You could be as big as Balthazar, and I would still love you."

I closed my eyes as the pain hit. Buffy would never again eat chocolate cake. She would never again smile and look into my eyes. And any tiny remnant that might have remained of the dream of a future together was now as dead and buried as she.

"I'm sorry," I muttered, getting up and stumbling into the bedroom. As I slid back under the covers, I felt the tears rushing in once more. The agonizing, gaping maw of loss again closed around my heart.

How could I ever go on, now? How could the world not wither and die without her strength, her love, her light? How could even the simplest action, like bothering to rise from my own empty bed each day, ever be worth the effort?

I felt a small, warm hand gently rubbing circles on my back, offering me comfort, but the gesture only served to break me further. It was the wrong small hand, the wrong touch, the wrong sweet, feminine scent. There had been a time, not so long ago--and yet, another lifetime--when Buffy's tender caress had healed me... brought me back from of a century of living death... mended wounds inflicted in Hell... cared for me when I was dying, and now...

I would never feel her again. She would never ease the pain of my soul, never give me just that tiny ray of sunlight to warm the cold inside of me. I would bleed and bleed forever, and there would be no one who could stop the pain.

Buffy was dead. Nothing and no one could ever bring her back to me.

"Oh god!" I wailed, "Oh god, Buffy!"

Fred didn't hesitate. She gathered me up in her lap as I broke down and sobbed, rocking me the way I had Dawn a few weeks before. I wept forever it seemed, until once again, I couldn't even draw enough breath to cry anymore. But Fred continued to hold me quietly until I spoke again.

"I loved her... with everything I am," I heard myself murmur. "I can't believe she's really gone. I don't know how to go on without her."

"I know," she whispered, then said, tears clear in her voice, "My sister died when I was nine. I cried like... forever, I think. All the time. I felt like somebody vacuumed out my insides. They wouldn't let me go to her funeral, so... I kept waiting for her to come back. I wouldn't listen to anybody who said she couldn't. My dad kept saying they should take me to the doctor, you know, because it wasn't natural for me to keep thinking she was just gone away for a little while. But my mom said no, I had to deal with it in my own way. I used to sit on the front porch swing all day and all night, and just wait and wait for her to come home until they had to carry me inside for bed. Then one day, my mom finally brought me to her grave. I screamed. But after that, it got better. Even though it was still really hard."

I nodded slowly. "It is hard. None of it seems real. We didn't... see each other much anyway, so... I keep thinking if I pick up the phone and call her, she'll answer."

"Yeah. I know what you mean."

I finally pulled away from her and braced my back against the headboard, taking long, soothing breaths to pull myself together. Fred scooted up next to me and we sat quietly for a while, each lost in remembrances of the loved ones who'd gone.

Or at least, I know I was. I was awash in little details of Buffy... the way she smelled... the soft warmth of her skin... her smile... even the way she fought. So many tiny things about this one amazing woman, who had so completely and fiercely captured my heart, I just couldn't comprehend the possibility that she simply... wasn't anymore.

"What was Buffy like?" Fred finally asked, "Everybody talks about her like she was the best thing ever."

I felt a sad smile sneak across my lips. "She was. Buffy was incredible... smart and funny... warm and giving. And she had this... spirit." I shook my head. "It's hard to put into words, but she was the most remarkable person I've ever met."

"How did you? Meet her, I mean?"

I closed my eyes and remembered... a cool Sunnydale night, when a tiny slip of a girl knocked me flat on my back in the alley behind The Bronze. How the pure shock of it had made me laugh for the first time in a hundred years, and something inside me had just known -- if I wasn't dust at the end of her stake in the next five seconds, my life would never be the same.

"It's kind of a long story," I chuckled sadly.

Fred gave me another one of her bright smiles. "I'm not exactly going anywhere."

So, I told her. I opened that vault of memory that I had been fighting to keep closed for so long. And once I began telling the tale, I couldn't seem to stop. Buffy filled me as I spoke... I could feel her flowing like blood in my veins. I shared all those tiny bits of life that she and I shared... both the beautiful and the heartbreaking, and as I did, I realized that the old cliche was true:

Buffy might no longer walk with me on this plane, but she would always go on in my heart. Still quipping mightily, laughing heartily, larger than life. I was still the recipient of all the beautiful gifts she gave me, and as long as I, and all the other people who loved her went on, she would never truly die.


	5. Stage V: Acceptance

"This is when the anger, sadness and mourning have tapered off. The person simply accepts the reality of the loss, and begins to move on. Although the survivors will probably never forget the one who is gone, the realization sets in that they have to say farewell, and return to the living." - Arnot Ogden Medical Center's Guide to Dealing With Grief

Translation note: Angel whispers (roughly): "I love you, breath of my soul. Always." (The 'always' translates literally to "it will always be like this".)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And so life went on... such as it was. I finally allowed myself to go on with it. The days that followed were difficult. There were still so many times when I had to stop what I was doing, and let a pang of pain pass. Or when I would suddenly smile or cry for no reason, overwhelmed by some memory or another of Buffy that stole upon me.

But I let them happen. I indulged those moments. The fact was, my heart was broken, and only time and patience with myself would allow it to heal. So long as I wasn't distracted in battle, or absent when my friends or a client needed my attention, there was no real harm in allowing myself to mourn. After all, as much as I might have genuinely believed to the contrary, grieving for my love wouldn't kill me.

Two months had passed since she died. Eight of the most difficult, arduous weeks in my entire existence. Then one night, I heard myself laughing at one of Gunn's tasteless jokes. The foreign sound of it took me--and everyone else--by surprise. In that second, I realized -- it was the first time I had laughed since I saw Willow sitting on the couch in the Hyperion's lobby on that warm May night when the bottom fell out of my universe.

I was finally moving on.

I excused myself from the meeting. No one asked where I was going, or if I was okay. Maybe they already knew. Maybe they understood what my laughter meant even better than I did, because I swear I caught them exchanging relieved smiles as I grabbed my coat and ran out the door.

It was time.

***

The drive to Sunnydale seemed to take only moments, those miles between LA and the Hellmouth quickly devoured by my focus on all the many things I wanted to say.

The walk to her grave felt different this time, too. Those memories felt less like a haunting, and more like a bittersweet blessing, urging me on.

The site was perfectly kept... not a single wilted flower or weed anywhere. Someone was watching over her. Maybe Dawn or Willow... Giles or Xander... maybe even Spike. More likely, all of them. Whoever it was, it gave me some small measure of relief to know that someone who loved her as much as I did was spending a lot of time there. She wasn't alone.

I set the bouquet of jasmine I'd picked from my garden amongst the others -- roses and lilies, daises and other wildflowers -- not a petal of which looked more than a day old, and I took a long, quiet moment to really look at the headstone for the first time.

"She saved the world. A lot."

There was so much that those words couldn't tell someone who never knew her. So much about true heart... courage and sacrifice... about a beautiful, giving soul who loved life. But then, how could this slab of marble possibly portray anything about the complex woman it memorialized?

We were the true testament of who Buffy was: myself, her sister, her friends... all the people who she touched and changed forever by her brief presence in this world. Everything around us owed its continued existence to her a dozen times over... every tree, every bird, every small night sound in the air around me. Those were the things that told her story.

I finally sat down on the soft grass. A few feet under me lay her body. Soft skin, golden hair, strong, lithe muscles... all now breaking down into the fundamental magick stuff that made up the universe. If I concentrated, I could feel that physical presence, the disturbance in the soil where she lay. It was usually such a loathsome skill, to be able to feel the dead... but right then, it made me feel better. It told me that she was here... somewhere... everywhere, and that she could feel and hear me, too.

"There's so much I never got to tell you, Buffy. So many things I wanted to share with you... to show you. I thought I'd come and maybe... I don't know."

I looked up at the crystal clear night sky... how it sparkled with a billion stars... and I imagined her smiling down on me from her place among them.

"I guess the point's kind of moot, now. Wherever you are, you probably already know all the answers to everything. But... I still need to say it."

I stared at her headstone again and pondered where to begin. 'How about the beginning?' I could almost hear her whisper.

"For a hundred years I wandered... lost... empty. No... not empty. I was full. Full of pain and regret and guilt... there was nothing but cold and darkness inside of me, as much as outside. But the first time I saw your smile... everything changed, just like that. It was like... the Powers gave me back the sun."

"You were so young... so innocent, and still... you taught me more about life... about living... than anything else in my entire existence. You taught me about courage... about laughter... love. You taught me what it meant to really be *strong*. To be *alive*."

I had to stop for a moment before I went on. These were things I had so long buried in the deepest recesses of my heart, and I found as they resurfaced, that they carried with them even heavier, sharper emotions that I had long forgotten. Here I was, laying my heart out on the grave of the only woman I had ever loved... and the simple fact was... it hurt. More deeply than an eon in Hell... more completely than walking away from her...more acutely than her tears when I told her that the Oracles were taking away our single, perfect day together...

God, did it hurt. But I plunged on.

"You know that I would give anything to bring you back. Even just for a moment. Just... to thank you for everything you gave me. And... for honoring me with your love. You changed my life, Buffy. You helped me want to be someone. I don't think that... even if we got to have a lifetime together, that I could ever find enough ways to show you what you truly mean to me... how much a part of me you are. Every step I take in this world... every soul I help... every battle I fight, every single act of goodness I perform... it's all because of you."

She was my Reason. She was the meaning that made every arduous step of my journey worth taking. And now... now I would have to do it all in her memory.

"I let you think, once, that I didn't want to be with you. I hope you know that wasn't true. That was never true. I would trade everything I have to be with you right now. And forever. But... I know that where you are, you're finally at peace. And I guess... that's enough. You deserve that rest. I love you, Buffy. I'll always love you, with all of my heart. And I'll never forget a single moment we shared. If I live until the end of time, I'll never, ever forget you."

I reached into my pocket and drew out my final gift for her... the twin of the ring that I gave her all those years ago, before our dreams dissolved into nightmares, and the future crumbled out from beneath us.

I traced the worn lines of heart, crown and hands... love... loyalty... friendship. In the end, we had them all. She would always have my heart. I would always be loyal to her memory. And I would always, always consider her my friend.

"Is duine a ghra thusa, anail le mo anam. Beidh se amhlaidh go deo," I whispered, setting the ring into the grass at the base of her headstone, and with one final glance, rose and walked away.

Again... without saying goodbye. I had never been able to really say it to her when she was alive, and I certainly couldn't now.

Because I knew, deep in the very center of my being, that Doyle was right. Somehow... someday...we would be together again.

***

I slept long and hard that sunrise, and Buffy came to me in my dreams.

It was nothing new to have her there. There had been many times when her presence in my sleep was the only thing that helped me hold on. Although other times, I admit, those nights were almost the final straw that broke the camel's back, because the feeling of missing her was so powerful.

But I remember clearly that this time was different. The sensations were so vivid... the scent of her skin... the sweet taste of her lips... the raging, devouring inferno of our passion as we made love.

My reward, I imagined, for letting her go. Beautiful, brilliant sensations to carry me through my lonely eternity.

"Angel..." she whispered... and she softly kissed along the edge of my ear, sending a tremor down my spine. I could feel wakefulness threatening... that lightening of the shadows of sleep that told me soon this dream would be over, and I would once again be desolate. I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut and refused to rise.

Just a little while longer... please...

"It's time to wake up, my love..."

No. Not now. Later. Later, I can get up and face forever alone. But right then I wanted to relish the feeling of her living heat against me... wanted to keep holding her, just like that. Just another day... another hour... another minute, and then I would let go.

Her kisses wandered softly... from my mouth, around my jaw, down my throat. I sighed, consumed half by this passion, half by the sorrow of knowing...

Would I really never feel this again?

"Buffy..." I whispered, tangling my fingers in her hair as she continued kissing downward, tracing each inch of my burning skin with tender care.

Even her memory set me on fire. Perfect, flawless, endless bliss as she finally rose above me, and took me deep inside of her, and we rode crest after crest of impossible dreams together.

When it was done... when the last of me was spent deep in the center of my love, the echo of her final cry still hanging in the air, I opened my eyes.

To find Buffy smiling down at me. "Don't tell me you really slept through that."

You may have heard that vampires have unbelievable speed and reflexes. Well, at that moment, I proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I stared at her for a split second, before I realized that I was awake when she said,

"'Morning, sleepyhead," and pressed a tiny kiss to the tip of my nose.

In the next breath, I was up, out of the bed, standing naked in the corner of my bedroom with my sword in hand.

Staring at Buffy, equally naked and now very, very confused, kneeling among my rumpled sheets.

There's very little in the cosmos that I'm afraid of -- no doubt a side effect of a few hundred years in Hell. Cordelia's coffee scares me. Chickens scare me. The idea that all of my mortal friends might someday die and leave me alone makes me want to fall apart.

But I had never experienced the kind of pure terror that I did in that moment.

Buffy's confused look changed to amusement, and she cocked a wry eyebrow at me.

"Not that the whole naked barbarian with a sword thing isn't really, *really* hot, but... what are you doing?"

Rage quickly leaked into my shock and fear. Whatever this thing was, how did it *dare* take this form? I brandished my sword menacingly at the apparition, and snarled, "Who are you? What do you want?"

Its expression shifted once again, now back to confusion, with no small dash of fear.

"What? Angel... this isn't funny," it complained, slowly rising from the bed.

I started shaking. So hard that I could barely keep the sword in my grasp as it came closer.

"STAY AWAY FROM ME!" I screamed at it.

The Buffy-thing started as if I'd struck it, and gave me a dark frown. "What's the matter with you?"

I couldn't back any further away from this... monstrosity wearing my dead lover's face. And I couldn't collect enough of my sense to attack it... or, really, do anything but stand there, panting and trembling.

It kept coming toward me, one small hand outstretched as though I were a dangerous animal.

"It's okay, honey... it's me. Buffy," it insisted.

My brain suddenly kicked in, a cacophony of confusion and disbelief echoing in my skull. It couldn't be her, and yet... it looked like her. Every detail... every inch of her skin... every small movement of her body. It smelled like her... like us... a musk of love and sex, vanilla and honeysuckle. It sounded like her... those were her eyes. It was Buffy.

"No," I muttered, shaking my head. "No, it can't be. It can't be you."

She was barely a foot away, now, her posture tense, ready for anything. If this was some creature sent to take me out, it was going to succeed, because I was utterly unable to move.

"Angel, it *is* me. Please... tell me what's going on."

I lost it... choked on all the conflicting emotions and instincts fighting for supremacy inside of me. Desire to grab her and never let her go... to cleave the head from this thing that dared the sacrilege of taking on her form. I wanted to run. To scream.

Apparently, I chose the latter, because Buffy jumped clear back to the bed, and a few moments later, the suite door burst in to admit a very frightened Cordelia and Wesley.

I spun to stare at them, still holding the sword.

"OH! Naked! Too much naked!" Cordy cried, covering her eyes.

Wesley was unruffled by my nudity. It wasn't the first time he'd seen it, after all. "Angel, what happened? We heard you screaming." Then he noticed Buffy, and instantly turned a deep, bright crimson as he averted his eyes. "Oh, dear lord. I'm sorry. We thought... we didn't mean... Oh, my."

Buffy kept her eyes on me as she slipped into my robe. "It's okay, Wesley."

"Angel, what are you DOING?" Cordy yelped from behind her hands. "What is going on in here?"

I couldn't stop gaping at the Buffy-thing. "You two see her?" I asked the others, gesturing at it with my sword.

"Well, yeah!" Cordy snorted. "We've sort of had to see her constantly for the past month! Well... except for all the days you've been locked up in here. Then we only had to *hear* her. Which, believe me, is just as bad."

"Something's really wrong with him," the Buffy-monster told them. "He woke up, took one look at me, and totally freaked."

Wesley moved toward me, taking the same cautious approach that Buffy had. "Angel? Do you know who I am?"

I shot him a withering look. "Of course I know who you are."

"But you don't know who Buffy is?"

"I know who that *looks* like," I corrected him, "But it's not. It can't be." All of the adrenaline seemed to leave me in a rush, and I finally let the point of the sword drop to the floor as I forced myself to look away from the Buffy phantom. My voice was barely a broken whisper. "It can't be her, Wesley. It can't. She's..."

My friend finally reached me, and took the sword gently from my hands. "All right. It's all right. Why don't you get dressed, and we'll figure out what's happened to you."

I glanced up again at Buffy. Her expression was wounded, her eyes filled with tears of hurt and concern.

Could it be? Had the Powers, by some miracle, brought her back to me?

"B...Buffy?" I asked, not daring to hope. My mind kept telling me... this was impossible. She was gone. I had said farewell to her just the night before, at her grave. "You... you're... dead."

Her eyes went wide. "What? No. Really. I'm not," she insisted, gesturing down over her body, now sheathed in my black robe. "I swear. Look. Alive and well."

I still couldn't move from my spot against the wall, all of my energy spent keeping myself upright while my brain scrambled for some explanation for how this could be happening.

Was I dreaming now? I pinched myself... she was still there. Had I finally died too, and Heaven (or maybe a different Hell) turned out to be nothing more than my everyday life, but with Buffy in it? Was I poisoned? Under a spell? Hallucinating?

"What the Hell is going on?" I finally wondered aloud. "How..." I shook my head. "How is this possible? I don't understand."

Everyone seemed to relax a little when it became apparent that I wasn't going to kill them all. Buffy walked around the bed and approached me once more, and this time, though I watched her warily, I let her touch me. She gently took my hand, and...

It was real. There was that spark that always caught between us, every time we touched. That tiny current of living electricity that was our bond. It rushed through me, snapping my long-dulled nerves to screaming life. There was nothing else in the cosmos... no magick or being in creation... that could effect me the way that she did.

"It... it's you," I gasped. "It's really you."

She nodded, giving me a teary-eyed smile, and I could see it there in her eyes... that glow that they always carried when she looked at me.

"It's me, baby. I swear," she assured me softly, and led me back to sit down on the bed before looking over at Cordy and Wesley, who still hovered in the doorway. "Guys... could you..."

Cordelia gave a worried scowl, but Wesley nodded and herded her from the room, my sword still firmly in his hand.

Then Buffy sat down beside me. I could feel the heat of her skin... hear her heartbeat as though it were my own. She looked deeply into my eyes.

"It's okay, Angel. I'm here. Everything's all right, I promise."

I don't know how long I sat there, trembling, gaping at her... experiencing a sensation I thought lost forever: the simple blessing of her presence.

She was there. She was alive. She wasn't buried in the cold, hard ground back in Sunnydale. She wasn't gone forever.

My Buffy was right next to me... exactly where she belonged. Exactly as I had wished.

"Oh god!" I cried, and before I knew what I was doing, I pulled her into my arms, crushing her against me, smothering her with desperate, grateful kisses. "You're alive! Thank God! Oh, Buffy! I love you!"

I broke down yet again. It seemed for the millionth time, I was overcome with emotion as I held her... kissed her, pressed my ear against her breast to hear the strong thumping of her heart. And I vowed--to her, to myself, and to the Powers That Be--that I would never, ever leave her side again.

***

Afterthoughts: Buffy

It was really scary to see Angel lose it like that. I mean... not in an "I lost my soul, psychotic nutjob mass murderer" kind of way, but in an "alternating between sobbing senselessly and laughing like a manic depressive on acid" sort of way.

I was way creeped, to say the least. But... I'll admit, at the same time, I loved all the incredibly beautiful and heartbreaking things he said to me as he cried. Especially the way, when he finally came to his senses again, that he looked deep into my eyes and promised that he would never, ever leave me again.

I could tell that he meant it. And I don't think I need to say how that made me feel.

After a while--a *lot* of kisses and reassurances that no, I really wasn't dead--we managed to get dressed and join the others. We all sat down and talked, and Angel refused to stop touching me for even a moment. It was so weird... me, Cordy, Wes and Fred had to rehash the past couple of weeks as if he hadn't been right there with us. The whole blind luck thing that I fell through the portal after fighting with Glory, and landed right on the roof of that boat Angel insists is a car. How I was really beat up, so they had to take me back to the castle for medical attention. (Honestly, I was *really* surprised that he forgot that part, considering how worried he was when it was happening.) How we spent a couple of days together while I mended. How his friend Lorne told us he could see that we had a common destiny, and this other green guy -- Numfar, I think his name was -- did this weird dance as he told Angel that there was nothing wrong with his soul. It was whole, intact, and completely un-losable. I still laugh, remembering that part. Lorne said it was The Dance of Joy.

Due to the mixed company, I skipped the part about how me and Angel screwed like bunny rabbits for two days straight after finding out about his soul. Then we came home. We told him about the big "Yay, Buffy isn't Dead!/Yay, the World Didn't End!/Yay, Xander's getting married!" party Willow and Tara threw, and how I had been here practically every day since.

Angel just sat there looking lost through the whole thing. When we were done, he told Wesley he thought the two of them should get together with Giles and discuss what he remembered. But he wouldn't tell me what that was. Even after we made love later, he flat out refused to say a word, insisting that it didn't matter.

Everything was different, somehow, after that night. Not that being with Angel hadn't been one incredible, amazing, mind-blowing moment after another all along, but... that night, he was so gentle... so loving, a couple of times I found myself crying right along with him. It was like being reunited all over again... times a thousand.

Funny... even all these years later, he still won't talk about it. I don't know why, I mean, it's not like we have any other secrets. He eventually told me all about The Day That Wasn't (which, considering he had already Shanshued at that point, wasn't all that important). He even shared some of his memories of Hell. And let's face it, when a guy has stood between your legs during three really long, painful labor sessions (the first of which left him with a black eye and three broken fingers) there's really *not* a whole lot of mystery left in your relationship. But he won't tell me why he thought I was dead, or what freaked him out so badly that afternoon.

Wesley and Giles know. But when I ask, Wesley just smiles and says he promised Angel he wouldn't tell, and Giles gives me this sort of mushy look and then grabs me in a completely un-Gilesy hug, and says it's not important. The Host is the only one who'll really give me any kind of answer. He told me one day that the power of love was nothing to scoff at. It could bring people back from Hell... or from the dead.

As usual, I have no idea what he's talking about, but... whatever. I guess it really isn't important. I'm not dead, and whatever it was that happened made Angel swear he would never leave my side as long as he lived. It makes him stop sometimes and look at me like I'm the most amazing, miraculous thing he's ever seen. So I figure, hey... it's all good, right?

The End. *relieved sigh*


End file.
